A dark decade of Disturbed

Disturbed fans fired up about the Aug. 31 release of its new album “Asylum” have a lot in common with the band’s drummer Mike Wengren these days.

“We can’t wait,” Wengren enthused last week in a phone interview. “Down time before the record comes out is always brutal for the band. We want everyone to hear it. The closer it gets, the more excited we get.”

That enthusiasm has been a common thread for band and fans alike during Disturbed’s 10-year run, a span in which the Chicago-based metal group has sold 11 million albums. Disturbed’s three most recent studio records debuted atop Billboard’s Top 200 album chart, making it one of only six rock bands to debut three consecutive albums at No. 1. The latest, 2008’s “Indestructible,” stayed in the Top 10 for five weeks, an impressive feat in an increasingly fickle and dynamic album-sales market.

The consistency in Disturbed’s sales, Wengren surmised, has a lot to do with the consistency of the band.

“Our fans know that we put our heart and soul, our blood, sweat and tears, into every ounce of music in those records,” said Wengren. “They know it’s not going to be a record of a couple singles and filler.”

Disturbed is headlining the main stage of the inaugural Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Festival, which will make a stop at Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain on Friday, Aug. 27. It’s a heavy-hitting bill that includes Avenged Sevenfold — whose new album “Nightmare” debuted atop Billboard’s album chart in late July — Stone Sour and Halestorm on the main stage and a bunch more on a second stage.

Disturbed’s set at Uproar, Wengren said, will make for quite a scene.

“I can’t leak it just yet,” he said, calling from a pre-Uproar tour date in South Dakota.

Uproar kicked off in Minneapolis on Aug. 17, and if you check out some fan-filmed YouTube clips from the show, you’ll notice a lot of flames, enormous video screens and what appears to be a very visually oriented production.

That said, Disturbed’s music — which combines modern rock, classic metal and intricate, prog-rock-esque syncopation — has been, and still is, its calling card. The set at Montage will feature some songs from “Asylum,” namely the title track and the first single “Another Way to Die,” the drummer said. Uproar will still be going strong when “Aslyum” drops, so expect Disturbed — David Draiman (vocals), Dan Donegan (guitar), John Moyer (bass) and Wengren — to add more tracks from the album later in the tour, Wengren said.

The band self produced “Asylum.” Draiman has said the songs work together in a thematic fashion. In a press release, he noted that the word “asylum” “is the image of a mental hospital or sanitarium, but it’s also meant to be a haven for a safe place.”

“I think it’s definitely signature Disturbed,” Wengren shared. “You’re going to see a lot more maturity from us, and not just from the lyrical content.”

The album will also feature Disturbed’s first instrumental song, “Remnants.”

“It kind of started out just as a jam,” said Wengren. “Danny and I were just sitting out in the music room. We almost just tacked it onto the song ‘Asylum,’ but we thought it would be really cool to make it its own song, because we felt it was so strong.”

The iTunes version of the upcoming album, which is available for pre-order, includes two bonus tracks, a pair of video instrument lessons and “Decade of Disturbed,” a documentary movie.

“Not to pat ourselves on the back, but the material that’s in (‘Decade of Disturbed’) is easily something that anybody could put out there and sell,” Wengren said. “But after a 10-year career of touring and all of our fans supporting us, we wanted to give it away.”

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